Since the beginning of September 2013 the handling of
IPR issues has been centralized in Finland. At the beginning of this year, new legislation
was ratified, taking the handling of intellectual property issues to the Market
Court. Earlier IPR disputes and appeals have been on the “to do list” of
District Courts as well as the Board of Appeal of the National Board of Patents
and Registration. In addition, IPR-related questions have also been assessed by the
Market Court in handling disputes relating to unfair business practices
as part of the case law of the Supreme Court of Finland. According to the case law,
infringing IPR rights means also dishonest business practices. The variety of
legal venues has been significant, and complex to handle.

The Market Court has concentrated
traditionally on issues relating to marketing regulation, competition, public
procurement as well as unfair business practices and it has experience also, to
some extent, in IPR issues. Focusing more on IPR issues is thus a natural
addition to the field of issues that the Market Court typically handles. What
is special about this situation? Well, Finland is the first of the Nordic
countries to centralize intellectual property matters in one court.

What this means in practice is that the
Market Court will get a large quantity of new cases. First,
the Market Court will now be the court of first instance in civil matters that
concern patents, utility models, trade marks, trade names, designs, integrated
circuits and plant variety rights -- not to forget copyrights and related
rights too. On top of this, appeals against decisions of the National Board of
Patents and Registration as well as appeals regarding domain name decisions
from the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority (Ficora) will now be a
responsibility of the Market court. However, criminal cases will not be heard
by the Market Court.

What about appeals to Market Court
decisions? The court's decisions in civil IPR matters will now be appealed
directly to the Supreme Court and in administrative matters (registrations) to the Supreme Administrative Court. The Court of Appeal will no longer handle IPR
appeals (this change being which was strongly criticized). Filing an appeal to the
Supreme Court is possible only if permission to appeal is granted and that will
happen mainly in cases with precedental value. In practice the Market Court is
now, in IPR infringement matters, the only instance handling the case. The said
will decrease litigation costs but also increase the importance of litigation
experience in the Market Court.

In Finland – at a general level – one
could say that the response to the reform has been positive and hopes are high
that a new and vibrant IPR court will speed up the resolving of IPR issues
as well as make the procedure more efficient. One of the main reasons for
centralizing IPR matters to one court was the need to have judges specialized
in IPR matters. The centralization creates a sufficient case volume for the
judges who already are IPR experts, and the quality of the decisions issued by
the new court will certainly be even higher than at present. The future in the
field of IPR matters looks very interesting in Finland.